Uncommon Ground: Grant Wood and Russell Lee’s Divergent View of Iowa

Join art historian James Swensen to explore Iowa through the divergent views of two artists. When Russell Lee traveled to Iowa in December 1936, he might have expected to find something out of a Grant Wood painting. Instead, the photographer in the employ of Roosevelt’s New Deal found a very different scene of destitute farmers facing a hardscrabble existence. The presentation will examine how Lee’s work in Iowa was influenced by Wood and how Lee’s portrait of the state challenged the pastoral and idealized vision for which Wood had become famous.

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